Big Nate Star Dove Cameron on Powerpuff Status

With the series premiere of Paramount+’s Big Nate around the corner, does series star Dove Cameron have an update on Powerpuff? “Yes and no,” she told ComicBook. The series, which was set to air on The CW, tells the story of an older and more world-weary version of the Powerpuff Girls, grappling with the consequences of having been celebrity superheroes when they were small children. Originally set to star Cameron, Yana Perrault, and Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD star Chloe Bennett as the titular trio, a pilot episode of Powerpuff was filmed in early 2021, but rejected by the network.

There have been conflicting explanations for the network’s reluctance to move forward on the series, but it isn’t that they aren’t interested in the property. Rather than passing on the project altogether, The CW plans to shoot a new pilot. Unfortunately, the delays cost them Bennett, who exited the project in August.

“I have to be careful, because it’s such a big property, and it’s kind of a thin line I have to walk, talking about it in a way that doesn’t give anything away, or say anything too misleading,” Cameron told ComicBook. “Where we’re at right now, I can confidently say, is that the producers and [writer Diablo Cody], and everybody involved, their last communication with me is that they’re very, very, very pleased in a way that we were all not. The first time we did the pilot, we’ve all talked about it and likened it to Game of Thrones, that did a whole pilot, and then they were like ‘Scrap it. If we’re going to do this, we have to do it right straight out of the gate, or it’s not worth it.’ Powerpuff is such a high concept show, and the way we wanted to do it was so high concept, that there were 99 ways it could have gone wrong, and one way it could have gone right. And I think we were close, but we didn’t nail it. That’s for a number of reasons. I remember them calling me and being like ‘This is how it ended up, and this is what we would rather do,’ and I was like, ‘Yeah, I can’t even be mad about that. That’s fair. Let’s do that, then.’ I think they really just want to get it right.”

The look of the series is shaped by acclaimed costume designer Leesa Evans, who worked on movies like American Pie, Josie and the Pussycats, Scooby-Doo, and The New Mutants. 

“Powerpuff to me, because Diablo Cody wrote it, and these girls are grown up now and they’ve become quasi-disenfranchised, it was really a really great moment for edgy color fashion,” Evans told me last year. “It couldn’t be more different than, than Scooby in that way. It’s using the color pops, but creating an edgy, modern, fashionable look, incorporating vintage clothes, and doing things that really sell the idea that these girls are now all grown up and have minds of their own.”

Fans have been wondering whether Donald Faison, who was cast in the role of Dr. Utonium, will return for the reshot pilot. Faison recently joined DC’s Legends of Tomorrow in a mystery role widely assumed to be Booster Gold.

Keep your eyes on ComicBook for more updates on Powerpuff as the project develops.